And what would become of me in the abode of your beatitude if I did not find there my friends, my ancestors, my masters, and my gods, and if it is not given to me to see Rhea's noble son, or Venus, mother of Aeneas, with her winning smile, or Pan, or the young Dryads, or the Sylvans, or old Silenus, with his face stained by Aegle's purple mulberries.' These are the reasons which I begged that simple man to plead before the successor of Jupiter." * This phrase seems to indicate that, if one is to believe Macrobius, the "Copa" is by Virgil.
"And since then, O great shade, thou hast received no other messages ?" "I have received none." "To console themselves for thy absence, O Virgil, they have three poets, Commodianus, Prudentius, and Fortunatus, who were all three born in those dark plays when neither prosody nor grammar were known.

But tell me, O Mantuan, hast thou never received other intelligence of the God whose company thou didst so deliberately refuse ?" "Never that I remember." "Hast thou not told me that I am not the first who descended alive into these abodes and presented himself before thee ?" "Thou dost remind me of it.

A century and a half ago, or so it seems to me (it is difficult to reckon days and years amid the shades), my profound peace was intruded upon by a strange visitor.

As I was wandering beneath the gloomy foliage that borders the Styx, I saw rising before me a human form more opaque and darker than that of the inhabitants of these shores.

I recognised a living person.